The consumerism of misinformation in health: the abject objects of desire.

The challenge of analyzing the infodemic distortion and avid consumption of fake news is linked to the complexity of production, dissemination, and contamination of the social imagination. The modalities of uninformative situations and gaps in the conceptual framework fall into indeterminacy, although scant attention has been devoted to the reception of messages. This paper refers to the technological and cultural circumstances from which the production and uncontrollable consumption of lies thrive, often justified for different purposes.

Fake news and the seven sins of capital: a metaphorical analysis of vices in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health crises spawn "sins" and moral deformities in society that are evident when they emerge but had seemed to be dormant to collective awareness before. Through the metaphor of the seven capital sins, the article analyzes the phenomenon of fake news in the social media and in the scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic: the lust of sensationalism through the seduction and exploitation of vulnerabilities associated with fear of death; gluttony for confirmatory contents that spread untruths in the attempt to turn versions into facts; the catechism of denialism, fueling wrath or hate in restrictive epistemic environments; the greed of new technologies in the attention economy through engagement as a new commodity; competition for the spotlights of media visibility and derived gains that incite pride and envy in researchers that confuse public meaning with fake research, in a cycle that feeds sensationalism, gluttony, hate, and greed in attention capitalism. Finally, sloth is portrayed as the capital sin of opting for communicative inaction.

[Collective interest cycles and trends in Google searches related to institutional campaigns on prostate cancer: promoting health or illness?].

Google algorithms record trends in interest on topics relevant to public health. WEB searches were analyzed (2014-2019) to identify patterns linked to prostate cancer. Relative Search Volumes (RSV) were analyzed by Google Trends on "prostate cancer" (PC), "prostate examination" (PE) and "PSA"; 260-week time series; Brazil region; Health category; Trend lines (degree 2 polynomials) to identify patterns; Averages compared by ANOVA; Sudden increase in November searches; Searches on PC greatly surpass PE and PSA; Stable annual PC averages; Discreet reduction in PE; Marked increase in PSA.

[Analysis of recommendations by the Regional Maternal Mortality Commissions involving deaths from induced abortion in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil].

Abortion is still a public health problem in Brazil and is among the leading causes of maternal death. Socially vulnerable women have the greatest risk of death from abortion. The Brazilian Ministry of Health determined mandatory investigation of deaths of childbearing-age women with discussion of maternal deaths by Maternal Mortality Committees, aimed at identifying failures in management of cases that led to or determined the deaths.

COVID-19, fake news, and the sleep of communicative reason producing monsters: the narrative of risks and the risks of narratives.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the world has witnessed growing tension from the pandemic dimension of a disease with severe epidemiological impacts and wide-reaching sociocultural and political spinoffs. In ideal conditions of public communication, the authorities would be aligned with a totally transparent system supplying abundant information and ease of understanding to generate credibility, confidence, and partnership with the media. In the hiatuses of acceptable versions and in the midst of indeterminations, individuals become their own experts, consuming fake news and reproducing fallacious risk narratives with disastrous consequences.